All posts tagged Charter Schools

Charter school advocates rally outside the state Capitol on Wednesday in Albany, N.Y.

Associated Press

ALBANY — Lawmakers resign, and policies change, but charter schools continue to divide the two houses of the New York state Legislature.

The issue’s ability to galvanize supporters and inflame detractors — cutting across party lines and involving the flow of vast sums of money — was again apparent on Wednesday, as thousands of charter advocates rallied outside the Capitol building. Read More »

The judge said the public advocate, Letitia James, failed to “exhaust administrative remedies” by going to court rather than waiting for the New York state education commissioner’s review, according to a spokeswoman for Ms. James.

Ms. James filed suit in December seeking to block dozens of co-locations of both charter and public schools that had been approved by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration approved most of the space sharing arrangements, but in February revoked space for three Success Academy charters, saying they mixed elementary children with high school students and would displace some special needs students. Read More »

Charter school supporters attend a rally outside the state Capitol Tuesday.

AP

Hundreds of New York City parents boarded buses to Albany with their children Tuesday morning, where they hope to rally lawmakers to their side in the battle over expansion of the city’s charter schools.

More than 2,500 parents and children from 95 charter schools across the city are expected to head to Albany for the rally, a show of force meant to protest Mayor Bill de Blasio’s decision last week to halt plans approved by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration last year that allowed three charter schools to use space in public schools.

The rally for charter schools comes on the same day as supporters of Mr. de Blasio’s universal prekindergarten proposal are scheduled to assemble in Albany as well, pushing lawmakers to approve an income tax increase for New York City that the mayor says is necessary to implement the pre-K plan. Read More »

The former head of a Brooklyn charter-school network pleaded guilty on Friday to repeatedly failing to file and pay taxes on $1.4 million in income and unreimbursed personal expenses paid for by the school.

Eddie Calderon-Melendez, the founder of Williamsburg Charter High School and Believe High Schools Network, agreed to pay $200,000, including fines and interest, New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office said. Read More »

New York City schools officials said Wednesday they were taking a hard look at closing 36 elementary and middle schools in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s final full school year in office.

The latest round of schools targeted for potential closure come after a year in which Bloomberg was partially stymied in his efforts to close some schools and change their staffs. Schools are often closed – or phased out – as a way of changing the teachers, administrators and programs in an institution that posted poor performance on tests.

Nearly twice as many schools were on the list as last year, when 20 schools got a close look, and 11 were eventually selected for closure. Two charters schools are on the list. Read More »

As a new federal report found that charter schools aren’t enrolling as many special-education students as traditional public schools, legislation designed to address that imbalance in New York remains stalled.

The review by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, identified the disparity at the national level without breaking out state-level findings. Special-education students made up 8.2% of charter school students during the 2009-2010 school year, below the average at traditional public schools of 11.2%.

A feel-good commercial touting the benefits of charter schools will be running for the next week on cable television in New York City and Albany, paid for by the New York City Charter School Center.

It’s a small ad buy — only in the tens of thousands of dollars, a spokeswoman said — but it comes on the heels of a massive rally Thursday outside City Hall in which charter-school parents urged mayoral candidates to support their schools. As the Journal reported Tuesday, supporters of charters and other groups that oppose the teachers union fear they will lose political ground when Mayor Michael Bloomberg leaves office.

The ad is aimed at parents and elected officials, and it is the first from the charter center since at least 2007, when executive director James Merriman took over. It starts out with a scene of a girl playing hopscotch accompanied by a seemingly simple slogan: “Charter schools are public schools.” Read More »

The founder and chief executive of a troubled charter-school network in Brooklyn was accused by state prosecutors Thursday with repeatedly failing to pay income taxes and creating phony records.

Eddie Calderon-Melendez, the CEO of the Believe High School Network, failed to pay taxes on more than $1.4 million in compensation between 2005 and 2010, Attorney General Schneiderman said in a statement announcing the indictment. During that period, Calderon-Melendez allegedly never filed a tax return.

Calderon-Melendez couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday. All three schools in the network, Williamsburg, Southside and Northside Charter High Schools, are located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The Believe schools are slated to close in June, marking the first time education officials are moving to shut down an entire New York City charter-school network. The schools are being targeted for fiscal and governance problems, as the Journal reported in January.

A prominent academic has resigned from the State University of New York Board of Trustees, one of two groups with the power to approve charter schools, saying the university is approving charters that increase inequality and needlessly divide the community.

The resignation of Pedro Noguera, a professor at New York University, comes as the debate about the role of charter schools heats up in suburbs and wealthier neighborhoods in the New York City area.

In an interview, Noguera said he sees a lack of political leadership about the role of charters and the deep divisions that occur when charter schools move into the same buildings as traditional public schools, a controversial policy known as co-location.

“Policymakers who are elected and accountable to the public should be thinking through the implications of what they’re doing, and I don’t see any evidence that that’s happening right now in New York state,” he said. Read More »

John B. King Jr. was elected to the commissioner post, as well as to the position of president of the University of the State of New York, by the Board of Regents on Monday. He succeeds David Steiner, who announced in April his plans to return to his former position as dean of the Hunter College School of Education.

King, 36 years old, was senior deputy commissioner and is widely credited, along with Steiner, for pushing through a contentious process to strengthen charter-school and teacher-evaluation laws in order to win $700 million in the federal Race to the Top initiative last year. King now has to oversee the implementation of those laws. Read More »